Thieving Forest (45 page)

“I fear you don’t like me, Meera,” Seth says, looking at her.

Meera presses her lips together, not enjoying the joke. Seth smiles at Susanna and then closes his eyes. Soon his breathing softens. Meera says quietly, “He will sleep off the infection.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell by the color of his wound.”

But Susanna is still worried. They need disinfectant. Boucherie makes liquor, and he also will probably have clean bandages and cloth for a sling. The cabin is only half a day’s walk from here, maybe less. Susanna can go there while Meera stays with Seth. It isn’t the perfect solution but there is never a perfect solution. Meera picks up the shredded root and puts it in her pouch, and then she begins to gather a few sticks for a fire.

“I’m still angry with you,” Susanna tells her.

Meera wipes her hands down her sides and looks at Susanna. Her face is rounder now but somehow not as childish. Seth is right. She seems older. “It turned out badly for both of us,” she concedes. “But our fates are tied. I understand this now. My guardian spirit rests with you.”

Meera’s guardian spirit—Susanna has forgotten about that. Does this mean she has met her seven demons? She looks at Meera’s face but Meera has already turned away to gather more wood. The morning light is on the other side of the trees but it is creeping closer. Already the day feels well underway, the events set in motion. Whatever else, Susanna reminds herself, Meera is practical. She will do what is needed for Seth. She feels for Koman’s knife on her belt. She doesn’t have room anymore for pride. Seth’s temperature is down, he is sleeping, that is good. The hammock hangs low to the ground with his weight. He will probably sleep all day and then wake up hungry at night. Maybe she will even be back by then. She opens his gray pack and looks at his remaining supplies. What should she take along with her? She needs to be practical, too.

The last part of her journey. Or is it the last? Each time she has set out she thought it was the last, and so far she’s been wrong every time. She remembers the shock that she felt when she found Aurelia, and how in her confusion she thought Thieving Forest would never end. But maybe she was right. All these trees still look the same. And even after she finds Penelope—if she finds her—they still have to get back to Severne.

She heads north following the streambed, which sinks into a kind of snaky gutter between the trees until the exposed water is barely an arm’s length across. As she makes her way alongside it she tries not to worry about Meera and Seth, but that feels false. She tries to clear her mind of hope but that feels false, too. Penelope might not be there, she tells herself. So many things could have happened. The forest thickens until the path by the stream is buried under skeletal leaves, and when the stream itself disappears, absorbed back into the forest floor, she stops and closes her eyes. She listens.

In the wild you must see with all your senses, Old Adam told her. He said, Lose your dread.

Birdsong, wind, the creaking of trees, something pecking on soft bark, and then she hears what she wants: a low roar of water to the north. She opens her eyes. A charm of magpies cries hoarsely in the tree just in front of her, scolding each other or her. One is looking down at her from a knobby branch, his eye like a dark black seed. There’s no path left for her to follow, but that’s all right. Magpies are a good sign for travelers. She thinks this is true.

As she walks toward the sound of the river the net of foliage above her becomes greener and denser, and when she at last gets to the bank the trees are leaning over the river coloring it mud brown with their shade. She scans the sky for chimney smoke. Boucherie’s cabin is to the east, according to Koman. But a huge, fallen oak tree half in the water obstructs that direction, and the bank on the other side is crowded with oaks entangled with the wild grape vines that give the Raisin its name. The natives call it Nummasepee for its abundant sturgeon, but looking down Susanna can see nothing but small pointed chevrons on the water’s surface made by the wind.

She begins to pick her way over the fallen tree, and then over the flat mossy stones that begin where the tree ends. It is rough going, and once or twice she has to get down on her hands and knees. She can feel the sun’s heat on only one side of her body. The bank is littered with rocks and broken timber and shrubs growing right out of the water, and her progress is slow, slower than she expected. From time to time she looks for signs of smoke. The fact that she sees none doesn’t mean anything, she tells herself. But she’s worried now, she can’t help it.

After the river turns, the bank levels out into a stretch of dark wet sand. At one end, four small black shapes shiver in movement. As she gets closer Susanna sees that they are buzzards, and that they are picking at something in the sand.

A body. A man’s body. The buzzards are feeding off its neck.

Her breath stops tight in her chest but she makes herself keep walking. It is Boucherie, and she will find Penelope’s body nearby—she says this to herself as though somehow believing it will make it not come true. The birds look up as she approaches but do not so much as lift their wings, so she makes a loud noise and swings her arms forward at them. At that they jump off a few yards, letting their wings rise once or twice before committing even to so small a distance, and then they each turn one eye to watch her.

The dead man is a native, not a Frenchman. Not Boucherie. And there is no sign of anyone else. He is face down wearing a hide tunic and trousers and plain ankle-length moccasins. His right arm is twisted at an odd angle behind him. Susanna covers her nose. Just behind him is a cut path with a blaze of three stones on either side to mark it. This must be the path to Boucherie’s cabin. Koman said it was well marked. For a moment she is tempted to go down the path and just leave the body behind her. But it does not seem right to leave the man so exposed. She remembers her own fear that the Stooping Indians would leave her behind for the buzzards. She does not wish that on anyone.

They are still watching her, four ugly, skinny birds with their feathers hanging crookedly about their necks like drunk old men dressed up in dirty finery. One of them, the largest, takes a step toward the corpse. Susanna flaps her arms at it again. She sees a large rock lodged in the sand near the path, and gets the idea that she might tie the body to it and push it into the river, where it would sink. But the rock proves unmovable, so instead she just digs a shallow pit in the sandy dirt as best she can, using a dinnerplate stone for a spade. The man has been shot, she sees as she rolls him over into the pit. She covers the body with sand and stones and heavy branches. Then she reties her pouch to her belt and checks Koman’s knife in its sheath.

As she makes her way down the short path she wonders for the first time what sort of man this Boucherie is. He traps animals and makes liquor, that is all she knows. At the end of the path there is a small cleared space with a cabin at its far end, and the sight of it does nothing to allay her anxiety. It is small and built flush to the ground with no porch or steps, and it leans a little westerly. There are narrow slits for windows and the door fits so crookedly to the frame that she can see spaces as big as her hand. No smoke is coming from the stone chimney, and there is a stringy spider web over the few sticks near the door that might be taken for a woodpile. No sign of people.

On the one hand, Susanna feels that nothing on this earth could induce her to go inside that dark, empty hut. On the other hand, she might be able to tell whether Boucherie and Penelope planned to return. Maybe she could even find some supplies, clean bandages and liquor for Seth’s wound. But the sight of a small cross made out of oak twigs and stuck into the ground near the cabin makes her stop again. A grave? The mound in front looks much too small for a person. Still Susanna feels a watery sensation in her insides, as if her stomach has begun the slow process of turning to liquid.

But it would be foolish to come all this way, she tells herself, and not at least look inside. She pushes against the splintered door gingerly, thinking maybe it will be locked. Hoping so.

It isn’t locked. As it opens a wave of musty odor comes at her and she looks down at the floor, which is made up of planks of rotting wood thrown down here and there as if someone meant to do more someday but never has. A shaft of light marks a knothole in the rough wall, with a puddle of water beneath it. Holes in the roof? She looks up.

“I have a gun,” comes a voice in the corner.

Susanna pulls in her breath. She looks all around, her eyes trying to adjust to the darkness. “Penelope?”

A pause. “Who’s that?”

“It’s me, it’s Susanna.”

Nothing, not even a rustle. Is it Penelope? There is something odd about the voice. She hears the cock of a gun.

“Don’t shoot, please, it’s only Susanna. It’s only me.”

“Hutay-ee is not here,” the voice says. It
is
Penelope. Susanna takes a step closer and stumbles on the edge of a wooden plank. She puts her hand to the doorframe to catch herself but something foul meets up with her there—bird feces? Also cobwebs and the dry skeletons of leaves.

“Don’t move,” Penelope says.

“Can’t you see me? Let me come closer so you can see that it’s me. Let me pull open a window shutter. It’s Susanna. Susanna, your sister. Don’t shoot.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Penelope says. “So you can just take your chance.”

Now Susanna can make out a table, a stool, and a figure sitting by the fireplace holding a long, old-fashioned pistol. Even from here she looks unkempt: her hair partly loose over her face, her dress bunched up and stained. There is a sour smell in the room. Penelope moves her head forward like the buzzards, one eye out, keeping watch on Susanna.

“All right then. I’m just going to stand right here and let you look at me,” Susanna says. “I won’t move. I’m leaving the door open to let in the light. Just look.”

Another pause. “Susanna?” Penelope ventures at last.

“Yes!”

Still Penelope does not alter the direction of her gun.

“Listen Penelope, I’m going to walk over to you now. Please put down your gun. I’m your sister. Susanna.”

Penelope’s eyes are like holes. She bends to put the gun on the stone hearth but makes no move to stand. She allows herself to be embraced by Susanna. “He left the pistol unloaded in any case.”

Susanna does not want to let go but Penelope shrugs under the embrace. The sour smell is stronger. Susanna steps back to look at her. Her face is thin and her chin has a few white pimples on it. She is wearing an ugly brown dress with no collar and with hooks and eyes down the front instead of buttons. Some of the hooks are missing.

“The dog died,” Penelope says. “Hutay-ee went off to get a new one.”

“Who is Hutay-ee?”

“The savages call him that.”

“Don’t use that word,” Susanna says.

“What word?”

“Savages.”

“Whyever not?”

There is something not right about her. Maybe from hunger, maybe from something else. She is not altogether right in her mind. Susanna feels a wave of dread go right through to her bones. A muskrat skin is stretched upon a board in the corner of the room, its guard hairs partially plucked. Susanna wants to let in some air and she pulls the plank away from one of the windows, but the cabin’s squalor is even worse in the light. Bird feces and dry leaves have settled everywhere, and she can hear mice as bold as the sun running across the loose floorboards. When she goes back to Penelope she notices several old bruises on one side of her face. Her lip has a silver scab over one corner.

Penelope lifts her arm to show her something else. A rope leads from her wrist to an iron hook built into the stone fireplace wall. “He ties me when he goes.”

“Why would he do that?”

It does not take long to cut the sorry, frayed rope. Penelope rubs her wrist, which is peppered with rope burns. Her breath is very bad.

“Have you been sick?” Susanna asks. The sour smell is vomit in the bucket beside her.

“I’m always sick. I’m pregnant.”

“You’re...but you can’t be!”

“Not by Boucherie. He’s a rogue. I won’t have his child. No, it was Thomas Forbes come to visit me.”

Thomas Forbes—Penelope’s first husband, a man who’s been dead for over a year. Susanna takes a breath and says carefully, “Penelope. Thomas died when his horse kicked him in the head. Remember? You told him the horse was a bad one. You told him to sell it. Do you remember that, Penelope? But he didn’t listen to you.”

Oh yes, Penelope agrees, but she goes on to explain in great detail how it is that Thomas Forbes was able to visit after being kicked in the head. It has to do with the particular way the horse struck him, not affecting his heart and nether regions. He is much more vital now than before, she tells Susanna. But Susanna is to stay quiet about this. It is a secret.

“If the rogue knows he will be angry.”

She still speaks in her quick, intelligent way but her eyes dart all about the room in a confused manner. Susanna says, “How long have you been alone?”